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Journal of Business Ethics

Erschienen in:

01.06.2015

Will You Purchase Environmentally Friendly Products? Using Prediction Requests to Increase Choice of Sustainable Products

verfasst von: H. Onur Bodur, Kimberly M. Duval, Bianca Grohmann

Erschienen in: Journal of Business Ethics | Ausgabe 1/2015

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Abstract

Research shows that commitment-based interventions are among the most effective strategies to encourage pro-environmental behaviors, but methods to elicit commitments from a large number of individuals (i.e., door-to-door or phone campaigns) are often costly and unrealistic. Predictions requests—a commitment-type strategy—are an effective mass-communication strategy and have the potential to influence pro-environmental behavior among large audiences. This research is the first to demonstrate that prediction requests in a consumer behavior context influence preference for environmentally friendly products. In addition, this research examines the role of individual and contextual factors in influencing the efficacy of prediction requests. Study 1 shows that exposure to an advertisement with a prediction request leads to increased preferences for environmentally sustainable (vs. traditional) household cleaning products, compared to a control advertisement, and that this effect is greater when the prediction request is paired with an audience cue (vs. prediction request only). Study 2 indicates that the effect of prediction requests on preference for sustainable products is greater for individuals with interdependent (vs. independent) self-construal. Substantive implications and directions for future research are discussed.

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The survey was conducted with 7,751 consumers from eight major countries, including Canada, US, UK, Brazil, China, France, Germany, and India.

Product pretest participants were undergraduate business students who did not participate in Study 1. They rated their purchase frequency of 10 different household cleaning products on a 7-point Likert-type scale (1 = never purchased this product and 7 = always purchase this product). Based on results of t tests, only products that were rated significantly lower than the scale-midpoint (4) were included in the product choice task (p < .05). This led to the exclusion of dishwashing liquid, laundry detergent, paper towels, and kitchen garbage bags.

For the single audience cue (Study 1), 12 forward-facing single portraits (7 male) with similar characteristics (size, background color, neutral expression) were obtained from an online royalty-free stock photography website. For the group audience cue (Study 2), the 12 single portraits were graphically compiled into 11 unique group images, each containing 4–6 individual portraits. An independent sample of undergraduate business students rated their impressions of the 23 images (counterbalanced) on seven dimensions using a 7-point Likert-type scale (1 = strongly disagree and 7 = strongly agree): confidence, influence, attractiveness, dominance, criticalness, supportive, and controlling. The three images selected (2 single, 1 group) scored significantly lower than the scale-midpoint (4) on all dimensions in one-sample t-tests (p < .05), and the two single images (male and female) did not significantly differ on any dimension (p > .05).

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Titel: Will You Purchase Environmentally Friendly Products? Using Prediction Requests to Increase Choice of Sustainable Products
verfasst von: H. Onur Bodur
Kimberly M. Duval
Bianca Grohmann
Publikationsdatum: 01.06.2015
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: Journal of Business Ethics / Ausgabe 1/2015
Print ISSN: 0167-4544
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-0697
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2143-6

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